Ashburnham teacher describes disorder after pair of explosions

BOSTON -- Dayna Mongelli was only about half a mile away from completing the Boston Marathon when explosions plunged the area around the finish line into chaos.

"All of a sudden, runners started coming to a complete stop," said Mongelli, 31, of Fitchburg. "They were saying the race ended. They were closing down the finish line, and we would not be able to finish."

Although Mongelli did not witness the explosions herself, she said her mother, Marion Bowler of Fitchburg, and her friend, Marvin Carey of Leominster, were at the finish line at the time, waiting for her.

"They heard the first explosion on one side and immediately thereafter heard the second one to the right," Mongelli said. "They saw bodies, many injured people."

Mongelli was running with a fellow teammate of the American Liver Foundation Liver Team. She said immediately after the blast, there was no direction being given to the runners as to what they should do or where they should go.

"We just started to find other people on our team, anybody in an orange jersey, and started to pull them all together," she said. "We were first told the Westin (Hotel) was under lockdown, but once we confirmed we could get back to our families, a lot of us started to head that way."

As of about 4:30 p.m. Monday, Mongelli, her team and supporters were in lockdown at the Westin Copley Place Boston Hotel. She said Huntington Avenue was closed and people weren't being let in or out of the city.

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Mongelli is a sixth-grade English teacher at Overlook Middle School in Ashburnham.

"I have a lot of worried students right now," Mongelli said, becoming emotional at the thought of her students imagining her being hurt in the blasts.

She said she hadn't had any contact with them at the time, and communication in general had been difficult because there were so many people trying to use their cellphones at once.

News outlets reported that cellphone communication in Boston was halted in case bombs were being detonated by cellphone.

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